1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a travelator system for conveying passengers.
2. Related Art
Travelators intended for transporting passengers are known e.g. from the following patent documents: Japanese patent document JP 2003-20181, U.S. Pat. No. 1,689,201, U.S. Pat. No. 2,769,522, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,592,139. In these, the conveyor includes a large number of adjacent narrow belt loops, several such belt loops being arranged over the width of the conveyor to transport users of the travelator. The conveyor has a large number of shafts arranged parallel to each other, at a distance from each other and transverse to the transport direction of the conveyor. Connected to each shaft are a number of belt pulleys placed side by side.
Further, the conveyor comprises a number of mutually parallel endless belt loops, which form the moving conveying surface of the conveyor. The mutual arrangement of the belt loops is so implemented that they are interlaced with respect to each other in a comb-like fashion around each shaft. Each belt loop is passed over two belt pulleys on two successive shafts. Of each two closely adjacent belt loops on the same common shaft that are passed over adjacent belt pulleys, one belt loop is passed over a belt pulley on the previous shaft adjacent to the common shaft while the other belt loop adjacent to the aforesaid belt is passed over a belt pulley on the next shaft adjacent to the aforesaid common shaft.
This prior-art type of travelator is designed to convey passengers from end to end, in other words, users board the travelator at one end and leave it at the other end.
A so-called fast travelator has a relatively high transport speed and it may be very long, even hundreds of meters. Such a long travelator provides the best service to areas located near the ends of the travelator. If more closely spaced areas are to be served, then it is necessary to build shorter travelators, and these have to be installed in a chain one after the other. However, in this case a higher speed of the travelator provides no corresponding advantage because time is wasted on accelerations in an acceleration section and on decelerations in a deceleration section. For example, if the nominal speed is 5 m/s, the acceleration and deceleration sections would already have a total length of about 100 m. Acceleration and deceleration require about 20 s extra time plus the time spent on walking between travelators. This type of a travelator system consisting of successive travelators provides no good service to those who travel long distances on them.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 3,518,944 discloses a travelator which may be provided with entry and exit branchings. However, this travelator is not of the above-mentioned travelator type in which the conveying surface includes adjacent belt loops interlaced with respect to each other. Instead, in this document the conveying surface of the conveyor includes a large number of adjacently mounted rotatable rollers of small diameter. The conveying surface having separate rollers in the main and branch conveyors is not even and not a very good surface to stand or step on. Moreover, the conveying speed achieved with the construction described in the above-mentioned document is very low (about 700 mm/s) and does not allow long travelators to be built in an economically reasonable manner.